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syncope at 05:22pm on 30/06/2008
syncope at 05:22pm on 30/06/2008I am a bit out of the loop lately, but I think there's some kind of debate going around as to whether the non-celebrity family/significant others of celebrities should be included in fanfic? So in a story about explicit sex between, say, Dude O and Dude Q, the debate really is should Dude Q's girlfriend be written about? This is a new and interesting development!
Now I will make some totally wild and silly claims!
Fandom/fannishness is a lot like a large group of social friends in RL. In real life, we like to gossip. Even I gossip from time to time (when I really dislike someone and want to spread HORRIBLE stories about what a douche they are!). RPF is a lot like gossip. You know *someone* made up the original story, right? Somewhere along the line some crackpot made up the whopper about Debbie down the street fucking her brother in law. That person is a fanfic writer--with words out loud! This person isn't a fan of Dude O or Dude Q, she's a fan of Debbie (in the same way we are "friends" with our frenemies--she follows Debbie's actions closely and reports on them to others with embellishments). Would this fanfic writer hesitate to include collateral damage in her crazy Debbie stories? HELL NO! Is the brother in law not an innocent by-stander?
In the same way, a story sounds more authentic when you include "facts" people recognize as semi-plausible. So we know Jared has a brother. Include the brother in your zany tale of Jared the pirate on the high seas! We know Frank has a wife. Include Jamia in that over the top vampire fic!
I think where we sometimes go wrong is that fans try to separate fan writing from "regular" writing. If you were going to write a historical novel about George Washington would you leave out Martha because she was a private citizen who never asked to be in your revisionist history thriller? Why when you write a story about Elijah Wood should you leave out his sister?
I also think that in this day and age where everyone googles themselves and no one seems immune from wanting a little piece of fame that a lot of these people you're trying to "protect" actually would laugh themselves sick with delight that someone in Boise wrote a ten part epic story about them just because their brother's an actor or in a band. To reverse the old "what would YOU DO if someone wrote that about YOU?" I mean, really, what would you do? Print it off and show it to everyone you know, right? Just like Debbie calls and tells everyone the gossip about herself because if people are bothering to make up stories about her (and she is SO OUTRAGED OMG) then that means she's popular enough to malign, right? Only people with a modicum of currency in whatever social circle they're in get talked about, right? Thus people being proud of landing on fandom_wank or being slagged off by random idiot X.
Now I will make some totally wild and silly claims!
Fandom/fannishness is a lot like a large group of social friends in RL. In real life, we like to gossip. Even I gossip from time to time (when I really dislike someone and want to spread HORRIBLE stories about what a douche they are!). RPF is a lot like gossip. You know *someone* made up the original story, right? Somewhere along the line some crackpot made up the whopper about Debbie down the street fucking her brother in law. That person is a fanfic writer--with words out loud! This person isn't a fan of Dude O or Dude Q, she's a fan of Debbie (in the same way we are "friends" with our frenemies--she follows Debbie's actions closely and reports on them to others with embellishments). Would this fanfic writer hesitate to include collateral damage in her crazy Debbie stories? HELL NO! Is the brother in law not an innocent by-stander?
In the same way, a story sounds more authentic when you include "facts" people recognize as semi-plausible. So we know Jared has a brother. Include the brother in your zany tale of Jared the pirate on the high seas! We know Frank has a wife. Include Jamia in that over the top vampire fic!
I think where we sometimes go wrong is that fans try to separate fan writing from "regular" writing. If you were going to write a historical novel about George Washington would you leave out Martha because she was a private citizen who never asked to be in your revisionist history thriller? Why when you write a story about Elijah Wood should you leave out his sister?
I also think that in this day and age where everyone googles themselves and no one seems immune from wanting a little piece of fame that a lot of these people you're trying to "protect" actually would laugh themselves sick with delight that someone in Boise wrote a ten part epic story about them just because their brother's an actor or in a band. To reverse the old "what would YOU DO if someone wrote that about YOU?" I mean, really, what would you do? Print it off and show it to everyone you know, right? Just like Debbie calls and tells everyone the gossip about herself because if people are bothering to make up stories about her (and she is SO OUTRAGED OMG) then that means she's popular enough to malign, right? Only people with a modicum of currency in whatever social circle they're in get talked about, right? Thus people being proud of landing on fandom_wank or being slagged off by random idiot X.
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